


bury your heart (where mine had been)

by DisasterLesbean



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bellamione Cult Ilvermorny Cup, Bellamione Cult War, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, Taking artistic liberties since jk told us nothing about vamps, canon until half blood prince, y’all want uhhhh another vamp au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-07-28 06:55:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisasterLesbean/pseuds/DisasterLesbean
Summary: “I lay bloody at the altar of your love.” She spits out the taste of her own blood. She runs her tongue over her teeth as she cleans off the collection of gore. “Yet, you still refuse to call it love.”





	1. Transformed by Hate

She’s livid and storming down the halls of Hogwarts and it isn’t even the first time today. Harry’s obsession with that book never fails to irritate her. The fact he is blatantly cheating and benefiting from it rubs her in a way she wishes she is beyond. She doesn’t like him doing better than her, not when he’s cheating. If it was fair she may not have this gut wrenching disdain. She can admit to herself that even then it might irk her. She’s had to fight the twitch in her hands that wants to cuff him over the head and lecture him for hours.

She still did but at least she pretended to try and be mature about it.

Ron is even worse. Whenever he isn’t off cavorting with Lavender he’s an ass to her. He is combative and mulish at the best of times but that combined with Harry’s state and it ends up a constant disaster.

She feels a visceral disconnect from her friends. 

She needs out of Hogwarts and away from them. She needs a break from their drama and all it entails. The way they act as if she is unreasonable for calling a suspicious book into question. As if Ginny hadn’t been tormented by a mysterious book. As if anything in their world could be trusted at face value. 

She follows a path they had learned when they’d been organizing for Dumbledore’s Army. She spent days looking at that map just as Harry and Ron did to make sure and note the passageways. Fred and George told Ron some of the paths that were obstructed, others they had to find themselves. 

She doesn’t have the map to monitor anyone’s movements so she hopes she won’t cross their path on her way out of the school. She pulls her cloak around her tighter as the cold air crept over her. She paves her way through a tunnel leading outside of Hogwarts grounds and into Hogsmeade. Her shoes crunch against the snow when she finally emerges into the town.

She lets out a relieved breath, finding an ease with distance between her issues. That disconnect between her friends has been slowly extending towards the rest of her life. She feels disconnected from all her friends, not just Harry and Ron. This year has been different than the last few. 

It’s more like her first year, before the troll. She knows that she has friends but it doesn’t feel that way. She worries herself in circles. She wants to find that Gryffindor bravery and confront them but people are distinctly more terrifying than facing down a basilisk or Death Eaters. That’s why she spent so much of her first year alone. Still, Harry and Ron are supposed to be different but this year has discombobulated their friendship. 

She continues along the path towards the town but doesn’t enter it. She doesn’t want to risk someone noticing her and reporting her. She lingers around the town, able to hear the laughter and see the lights but doesn’t dare go beyond. She hugs herself tighter against the brisk wind, finding a fallen tree to sit on. She has to brush the falling snow off but luckily it's not packed too tightly. Her outer robes may get wet but she’ll survive. 

She sits down and leans forward onto her knees. She knows this can’t continue. This strain between them all. The way Ginny’s lips tighten at the book Harry hoards selfishly. His obsession with Draco that has doubled this year. How Ron and Hermione can’t even seem to be in a room together anymore because of his obnoxious behavior and her knee jerk harsh responses.

Harry has tried to comfort her, believing her anger is due to feelings for Ron. It isn’t but he didn’t believe her when she said this. She loves Ron as she loves Harry, as a brother. It is his behavior she finds herself constantly bothered by. It’s tearing them all apart and they have to fix it. 

She knows that they won’t. They stubbornly refuse to believe that there is an issue. Rather, they know there is one but they refuse to admit any fault. It will have to be her who approaches them about it. She lets out a frustrated huff, it’s always her. 

She loves her friends, enough that she doesn’t know how she’d go about living without them. However, at times like these she has to grit her teeth at their antics. She hates that they force her into this role. The mediator, the one who has to confront them. She wishes for once they’d take responsibility for their own actions.

“You look frustrated, girl.” The voice comes from behind her. Close, too close. Hermione’s hand is flying to her wand before she can doubt herself. Before she can turn on the man, his arms lock around her in a tight and unyielding grip. She can smell his overabundance of cologne, feel his body against hers. “At least you won’t be frustrated for much longer.” His laugh is as rough as his voice. It raises the hairs on the back of Hermione’s neck. She attempts to lash out at the man, shove him off. She only needs a moment to get ahold of her wand. 

She doesn’t know enough about wandless magic to use it against her assailant. If she gets ahold of her wand she can take the man out in moments. Harry and his training fills her with a confidence in her actions. 

Despite all this, despite the years of surviving and fighting, she isn’t fast enough. His hand reaches into her hair and tugs her head to the side, revealing her throat. Wasting no time, he buries his teeth into her flesh. 

Pain explodes across the site of his bite. Hermione continues her attempts to struggle, tries to throw him off. It only tears the skin around his teeth, no, fangs. She feels terror spread throughout her body. She tries to scream only for his hands to cover her mouth. 

She didn’t want to be near Harry and Ron but now she wishes she hadn’t left. She should have just stayed in Hogwarts, in her bed, where she was safe.

Now she is sitting here in a cold that is slowly burying itself in her limbs, nearly as deep as his fangs. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving either. Nobody knows she’s missing and she can’t reach her wand. She’s struck with the absolute clarity that she is going to die. Blanketed by snow still falling as if nothing changed with only her murderer for company, buried in a coffin of ice.

The cold bites into her more with each lap of his tongue over the wound, with each drop sucked from her. She’s always been curious about vampires. To think this is how she finally meets one. 

After what feels like a lifetime, his teeth finally withtract from her and his grip leaves her the same moment. She drops into the snow beneath his feet. Her vision is blurred, she feels her eyes becoming heavier with every blink. He stands there in nice robes, slight stubble, completely unremarkable. He looks like anyone else with the exception of her blood smeared across his face.

His expression goes from pleased to surprised. “Hermione Granger?” His laughter causes her to shiver. She wishes he would just leave her to die in peace but as he crouches near her she knows she won't be so lucky. “I wonder what would happen if one of the golden trio would join our bloody ranks.” She is filled with such a hatred for this man she hopes they find him. She hopes they bestow no mercy upon him. 

“Shall we find out?” His teeth are now digging into his own wrist. The sound of flesh splitting is too loud, echoing in the silence around them. The blood patters into the ground, white running red. 

He brings his bleeding wrist towards her lips and she uses the last vestiges of energy to try and twitch away from him. “None of that now.” He warns as he lays his wrist over her mouth. Despite her best wishes the blood makes it past her lips and it's like a jolt to her system. 

Her blurred vision fades and her waning energy is replenished. She locks onto the source of the blood, sucking deeper and quicker as she is not only refilled but going beyond that. He takes his wrist back, shoving her away. “Greedy. Nonetheless, that should be enough. Have fun.” 

As quick as he came, he leaves. Hermione attempts to stand only to trip and fall back down. She then tries dragging herself back onto the fallen tree, hands uselessly clawing at the wood. She isn’t anymore capable of that then standing.

Hands now splintered, she falls into the snow once more. She rolls onto her back and gives into her own inability. A new pain begins. It doesn’t remain in her neck as the bite had but it spreads throughout her body. The pleasure of the blood transference long gone leaving behind an agony. 

She isn’t a fool. She knows exactly what’s happening. They’d read about it in class and she’d read a bit more at the library when her curiosity was piqued. For whatever reason he’d decided to change her instead of letting her die. She knows the process will take a few hours and it will be agonizing. 

The thought that causes her brain to slam to a stop is the idea of after. No magic. He had not only ripped away her humanity without a second thought but he’d taken away her magic. 

She lets out an angry scream at the thought. The rage becomes overridden by pain. Everything becomes overridden by pain. She feels herself drift in and out of consciousness. Her senses dulled, everything is distant and muffled. 

Hours pass. The night is silent. She can no longer hear the clamor of the nearby town nor see the light. She can only feel the transformation. The change from human to inhuman. It is when two of her teeth are driven out of her mouth, to make room for her new pair of teeth, that awareness starts to leak back in. 

She can feel it when it finally robs her of her magic. The connection that had existed between her and her magic is severed. Snipped as easily as a thread, the Fates reigning chaos upon her life. Everything is bleary once more. She numbly raises her hand, finally able to move it again. She wipes at a tear track and it comes away red. Blood. Even the reminder, the word, sends a thrill of desire through her system. 

She unburies herself from the coffin of ice that had indeed claimed her as she had feared. She stands shakily, unused to this new body she finds herself inhabiting. She becomes single mindedly focused. Blood. It keeps repeating in her mind like a broken record. She needs it. Her mouth is dry with the longing, her body moving forward towards the sound of heartbeats. The sound of shifting bodies and warmth waiting to fill her hungry body. 

Every sound except those steady heartbeats is dull, uninteresting. One heartbeat is closer than the nearby cluster. It is quickly growing closer and closer. It is running towards her. Gargled words meet her ears, a hand against her shoulder. 

Blood, heartbeat, teeth. 

The warmth floods her mouth before she can consider her actions. She bites deeper at the taste. Fangs burrowing their way into foreign flesh. A yelp and a pained groan, her name, hands attempting to shove her away. She understands, she tried to shove him away too. Like her, eventually the heartbeat reaches for a wand. Hoping that a stick can provide the protection they were sworn. The heartbeat isn’t any luckier than she was. She shoves the heartbeat down and traps it beneath her, pinning thrashing hands.

Blood, heartbeat, fangs.


	2. Exile of the Damned

She doesn’t know how long she lays there. The steady stream of hearty liquid decreases to a dribble. The heartbeat beneath her slows until it beats no more. She can feel the heat fill her body. It sloshes around her stomach and bats away the cold needles driven into her skin. She pushes herself off of the heartbeat, wiping her mouth and licking at the excess blood off her fingers. 

Glazed vacant eyes look up at her. Not just any eyes but a friend’s eyes. Neville’s sheet white face remains unmoving. A strangled noise rises up in her throat. His neck is savagely ripped open. It looks like a wild animal tore at him. His skin is split, muscle torn, the little blood left speckles the gruesome wound. 

She places a shaky hand to his neck, the unmarred side, to feel for a pulse against all reason. There is none to be found. The panic starts curling around her. This has to be a nightmare. It has to be. There’s no way she got turned into a vampire and immediately murdered one of her friends. She wants it to be untrue but knows by the sharpness of the iron still coated her tongue that it is true. Neville’s rapidly cooling body beneath her only makes it more clear. 

Her oncoming panic is stalled by the approaching footsteps, their identity becomes apparent when voices join in. “Neville! We heard screams, did you find Hermione?” They find her quicker than she thought they would. She’s still bracketing Neville, blood still covering her. “Hermione?” Confusion, yes, she would be confused in their place. She is confused in her own place. She knows what’s happening but can’t make any sense of it. 

Seemingly someone finally notices Neville beneath her. “What did you do?” A soft, feminine voice. Hermione finally turns away from her own actions to face her friends. Their faces are painted with the same horror she knows she wears. Ginny’s the one who first noticed, first asked. Words still leaving her lips. Hermione realizes she turned towards Ginny before she finished her question. Faster than she could have before. 

“Is he dead?” Harry, she would know his voice anywhere. He takes a step towards them, uncertain of the situation but unwilling to waste time they may need. There isn’t enough time to fix this. Not unless one of them is hiding a time turner. The time to stop her has passed, all that’s left is the after. 

Harry takes another step and Hermione recoils, all instinct and violence. A self-satisfied grin stretched over teeth, so many teeth, fangs buried into her throat, a hand against her shoulder, Neville’s hand. She’s not safe from them and they are certainly not safe from her. Harry puts his hands up in a placating gesture. He looks like he did when he tried to approach Buckbeak. She supposes it's not too different. 

“‘Mione, what’s wrong?” Ron, his eyes still on Neville. 

“I didn’t mean to.” She wonders if she sounds how she feels. Like the entire foundation is crumbling beneath her.

“What did you do?” Striking, accusatory, pointed. Deserved.

“I-I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!” 

“It appears you found Miss Granger.” Dumbledore cuts into what was surely escalating. Ginny is huffing unhappily, Luna looks sad and lost, Ron looks torn between helping her and condemning her, and Harry looks numb. Numb and not entirely aware of what’s happening. Hermione can relate. She feels like her head in split into pieces, still trying to reorganize itself to this new world. This new world where she can hear for miles but still can’t hear Neville’s heartbeat. 

“Neville found her, we just followed his screams.” Ginny’s wrath is unrelenting. A pyre built on the frustration and worry over Harry’s situation, set alight by the tragedy she’s been primed for. Worse yet, a tragedy she wasn’t entirely prepared for.

“I see. Can you walk to me?” He directs to Hermione this time. She nods slowly, unsure of any of her movements. She feels newly birthed. Unaware of her own strengths and weaknesses. She’s killed one friend she’d like to keep the number at that. 

She stands just as slow. Slow for her own state of mind, for the pieces of her still reforming, but also slow for her friends. She doesn’t want to worry them anymore than they are already worried nor cause them anymore reason to grieve. She walks over to Dumbledore as he requested, her body wanting to go quicker than she’s allowing.

She stops before him. Everyone’s breath is held as he looks for whatever it is he’s searching for. He reaches a hand forward and as she did with Harry earlier she flinches back. “Be still child.” He instructs her and she fights the urge to scamper away. He reaches to her lips and she hesitantly opens them. The heartbeats around her grow stronger, the flow of blood echoing in her ears. “As I feared.” He looks terribly old in this moment.

“What is it?” Ron asks without decorum. 

Dumbledore does the mercy of not answering him, of not pretending she isn’t waiting before him. “Do you know?”

Hermione can’t help the wobble in her lip when she replies. “Yes.” It’s all she knows. It’s all she can think and all she can feel. Everything is different because of the very fact. She’s a vampire now. Her humanity altered as quick as it takes her to get up in the morning. “What happens now?” 

“You can’t return to Hogwarts I’m afraid.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“No my dear girl, no. You won’t be facing Azkaban either if that’s your worry.”

“Why not?” An edge creeps into her tone. She knows she deserves it. She killed someone, a friend, she can’t go unpunished.

“Your situation forbids any actions against you.” His words are meant to be reassuring but they are anything but.

“I don’t understand.” Her eyes trace back to his collapsed body. 

“I suppose you don’t.” His gaze settles on her, dragging her attention away from Neville’s corpse and back to himself. His expression is weary but resolute. He knows his course unlike her and he won’t divert. “You can’t be held responsible for any killings during your first bloodthirst but any killings after, you can and will be held accountable for.” This is a far cry to any of his previous lectures and warnings. This is not an old man wagging his finger at her. This is a powerful wizard giving her an order, an ultimatum. Forgiveness for the unforgivable but never again. 

“Why can’t I be held responsible? I should be.” The sickness she’s felt since she first saw Neville’s face clouds her. 

“Wizard-Vampire laws, they clearly waive you of responsibility. It is the only allowance you will be allowed. I advise you stay within the wizarding world, Miss Granger. You must depart.” The dismissal is clear. The way his eyes shroud over hurts in a way she hadn’t expected. He looks at her as she looked at Neville. He looks at her as if she is dead and gone from this world. She supposes she is.

“She is just being sent away?” Ron’s tone is a repeat of his previous expression. A confusion of emotion. Unsure whether to be more upset at her being sent away or no further punishment.

“It’s for the best. It was a pleasure having known you.” Dumbledore offers her a surprisingly brittle smile. “The rest of you, class is starting soon.”

“What about Neville?” Harry asks, voice watery.

“Someone will come along.” No one has a response to that. As Dumbledore walks away, silence falls.

Hermione turns towards her assembled friends. No one knows how to start the goodbyes. No one knows how to handle losing two friends in one night. Neville’s blood was still on her hands and face, tacky and drying. Harry bodily slams into her his hug tight and unyielding. “Don’t go.” The desperation of a little boy with no friends who grew up underneath a staircase is present in every pained syllable. She tosses her arms around him, tugging him against her. She’s hyper aware of the fact he groans when it feels like she’s applying no pressure at all and eases up. 

“I have to Harry. He wasn’t exactly giving me a suggestion.” Hermione has to force the words out. With Harry wrapped around her, all she can smell is him. His blood is flowing beneath his fragile skin only inches away, taunting her. She could feel the throbbing in her fangs intensify. 

“You didn’t mean to.” Maybe from someone else it would have been a question but from him there is no hesitation, no ripple of uncertainty. “Remember that ‘Mione.” He lets go of her, he tries to casually wipe away his tears. She can feel her own running down her face. 

Ron’s jaw is clenching and unclenching in consternation. Torn as he has been the entire time. Gaze drifting between her and Neville as if she is asking him to choose a side. She isn’t and she never would ask him to. “You really are a vampire.” His gaze is on her face rather than her eyes, she wipes her tears and they come away red. He doesn’t hug her like Harry, possibly because he’s more aware of vampirism and its dangers than Harry, possibly because that’s just their relationship. 

A hand on her shoulder, not pushing at her like Neville’s had but squeezing in some attempt of comfort. Some attempt at reassurance that everything isn’t falling apart before her, that she isn’t left helpless against the tide of the world. “I’m really sorry.” Words she’s heard many times. Words that are used when someone doesn’t know what else to say. A last ditch effort to relieve someone of the pain that haunts them. She accepts it for what it is. 

“No, I am.” 

“It’s not your fault, it’s whatever parasite attacked you.” His eyes sharpen at his own words. A new target for all his conflicting feelings, it draws out his rage and desolation. “I’ll kill him when I find him.” 

It’s such a Ron thing to say that it brings a weak smile to her face. “You can’t find him Ron.” 

“Harry and I can do anything if we set our minds to it.” With that oath, one she knows he’ll try to keep, he pulls back. 

Ginny stands with a pinched angry expression. Arms crossed, stance ready for battle. She is closed off and fuming. Hermione feels her stomach drop at the sight. She looks torn like Ron had earlier but ultimately her decision keeps her rooted. 

“I just can’t.” More broken words. Weak platitudes that Hermione can’t hold against her. Hermione can only nod because she can’t either. She feels like she’s being held together by the force of the wind. Merlin help her if the wind decides to slow down.

Luna is crying but she approaches her and offers her a grim smile. She takes out her wand and casts a quick scourgify, quick enough that Hermione is slow to react. She cleans Hermione’s face and hands before putting her wand away. Luna takes Hermione’s hands and lets out an exhale. “It’ll get better.” 

Hermione seriously doubts that but doesn’t want to make this situation anymore morose. Luna pulls back and all the farewells have been made. She isn’t sure what’s supposed to happen now. She’s supposed to just walk away, banish herself. Dumbledore told her to stay within the wizarding world, his only buoy in the ocean she finds herself adrift in. 

She knows she’s lucky not to be dead or imprisoned but her freedom feels wrong, tainted. If she was anyone else but one of the golden trio she wonders if she would be extended this same mercy. It leaves a bad taste, that preference. The obvious differential treatment. The fact she is going to walk away from murder with no consequences when Neville will d never walk again leaves her bitter.

The blood was expunged from her skin by Luna but she still feels dirty. She still feels coated in red and what’s worse is she knows she’s not satiated. She knows Dumbledore was serious about leaving Hogwarts but she isn’t sure how she’s supposed to just walk away after everything. Years of her life, years of friendship, lost in one night.

“It’ll be okay.” She knows it’s Luna. Harry is bargaining, begging her to stay before trying to alleviate her guilt. Ron is fiery vengeance, ready to hunt down her sire. Ginny is broken trust and a wrecked friendship. Luna is reassurance.

She takes one more look at the array of friends she isn’t sure she’ll ever see again before turning away for good. She puts one foot and then another, slow but sure. She focuses on her steps, she thinks only of what foot comes next, and walks away from her life.


	3. Surviving Within

Dumbledore, as it always seems, is right. She finds spending any time in the muggle world is a poor choice. They are quick to find something about her unnatural. Witches and wizards can go under their nose far better than magical creatures can. They notice how dark her eyes are, how she doesn’t look like a human anymore, and if she isn’t careful they notice her fangs. She learns there is more temptation with muggles.

The smell of magic is enthralling, it makes witches and wizards more alluring than muggles. Yet, there is a danger present with them. The tantalizing scent of magic is a warning in of itself. A natural defense to vampires. Should she try and drink from a magic-user she’d likely find herself on the dead end of a spell. Muggles are hopeless. Unless she exposed herself to a military she doubts an average muggle could put up a struggle. They’re little more than dying prey. Witches and wizards on the other hand, can and will end her existence with one wand movement. 

Although she has no wish to feed on another living creature after murdering Neville, she finds herself avoiding the temptation. She avoids the humans that leave themselves so vulnerable and hides from the call of magic in the magic-users veins.

After being sent away from Hogwarts and her life, she first goes to Diagon Alley. She looks for some answers and direction. She didn’t expect the reception she gets, she supposes that is short-sighted of her. 

She had seen how everyone treated Professor Lupin, she should have expected it. She thought Draco’s and the other students behavior about her muggle-born status was bad but it had nothing on the reaction she gets when she walks into Diagon Alley. The thinly veiled disgust, the cold shoulder, the corralling into Knockturn Alley. She learns quickly to avoid Diagon Alley. Even the residents of Knockturn give her odd and angry looks. Regardless, she spends months in Knockturn. It’s the only remotely safe place for her kind. 

Jobs are hard to come by. Vampirism, she finds, isn’t much unlike being a felon. She ends up having to work jobs no one else is willing to work. She barely has time to do anything else. Knockturn teaches her a bit of what it means to be a vampire but not as much as she hoped for. She would have gotten a book on it but Diagon won’t sell to her and Knockturn’s prices are too high. It’s because of this silence and hate that she doesn’t hear about Krea for months.

She wastes months living on the streets in Knockturn, barely scrounging by to afford her next bottle by the time she hears of Krea. Feedings are a lot more frequent than she had expected in the beginning. She has no intention of feeding on anyone in general, especially with Dumbledore’s warning, but a resident in Knockturn had informed her even biting anyone is directly against Wizard-Vampire laws. This means a strictly bottled blood diet. She knows she can consume blood pops as well but she doesn’t have the money for something like that when she can barely afford the bottled blood.

Getting used to being a vampire is a constant struggle. It seems like everyday she has a new discovery. A new law someone reveals to her, a new restriction. She keeps discovering more about what being a vampire entails and rarely is it good news. Some she already knew due to her brief research but she is surprised by all that is left out. 

She had expected the speed and strength but not to the extent present. She is infinitely faster and stronger than any magic-user she’s met. She knows she can take down an unsuspecting wizard with minimal effort if she wants to. The threat lays in if they expect her. They are capable of killing her far easier than she could kill them.

She wonders if this was left out for a reason. She knows now the wizarding world was not very magical creature friendly. It could be an oversight, a poor explanation of vampires proper strength or it is intentional. Intentionally making vampires seem weaker and lesser than wizards, making the option seem less enticing. Hermione thinks it necessary, the realities of living as a vampire are already dreary enough.

The constant bloodlust she had expected. It is stamped across the few books she’s read on the matter, repeated over and over. It is as if it signs off every sentence. They are strong but they have bloodlust. They are fast but they feed on the innocent. The rhetoric was clear even then to Hermione. 

They may be immortal but it is not a life worth living, a life as a monster. After Professor Lupin and the house elves, she was more willing to listen to an outside source but she wasn’t driven to help vampires like she was the house elves. She should have been. She wishes she still had that time turner so she could have given them the attention they deserve. She wishes she could go back and run away from Neville, that she never left Hogwarts that night. 

Even after so many months, she still feels Neville’s death. Despite her own sins, she doesn’t think all vampires are monsters. It isn’t possible. She knows many follow the same laws as her, the same ethics, and they don’t hunt or kill. If they don’t kill, how they are monsters alludes her. She knows she is, she has to be. Only a monster would kill a friend but she refuses to condemn an entire people as monsters. It turns out, she’s not the only one who believes this. It just takes her a while to find more understanding people. Understanding people meaning other magical creatures.

Krea changes things for her. 

It takes nearly a year to hear about it. It’s a predominantly magical creature inhabited plaza. The businesses are run by creatures, the housing is lived in by creatures, the presence of non-creatures is rare. It sounds like a safe haven to the constant aggression and bigotry she faces even in Knockturn. A respite from human supremacy. She viscerally remembers the disconnect she felt the first time she thought of humans as different for the first time. She knows she’s a vampire, inherently inhuman, but the first time she distinctly thought of others as human shocked her. 

A witch was lauding her magic over her, particularly brutal and spitting hate, and she thought with such clarity this human was trying her temper. It pulled her out of her head, where she disappears whenever they start giving her that look. The look that prefaces sharp words and barely restrained hatred. It went from a stray thought to a common term. They are humans, whether good or bad. They are completely different now. 

She knows from the first time she hears about Krea that she has to get there. It’s a place where she wouldn’t have to bite her tongue and let the humans parade upon her starving body. A place where she wouldn’t fear for her life. That determination causes another roadblock. No one in Knockturn will give her directions to Krea. 

They know she is reliable for cheap labor and as a result they have no interest in sending her to greener pastures. She continues working for them, still in need of their meager wages to afford blood, but begins listening for any more mentions of Krea. Her more frequent employers are careful to avoid any talk of it after she expressed interest. Everyone else just doesn’t mention creatures, they’re below their radar after all. The heat of anger that comes with this clear dismissal becomes a common occurrence for Hermione.

Ron once told her that he’d rather fight the troll from their first year alone than deal with her when she’s angry. She figures he has a right to that after all the times she’s gone off on him. He isn’t wrong. Her anger, when prompted, isn’t quick to leave. It hangs around until she is able to fix the point of her anger or it never left. She can’t exactly fix the widespread discrimination of creatures she is forced to endure. She has to learn to survive within it. 

It takes awhile for the anger and indignation to burn through her mourning and self-loathing but when it does, it burns brighter. It makes grit her teeth at the human’s ire and superiority. Unlike Malfoy’s bigotry, she can’t fight back. Her muggle-born status was relatively protected by the government. Pure-bloods didn’t like her or other muggle-borns but most people would back her if needed. There is no support system for creatures. Humans simply aren’t their allies. 

She has yet to meet a human who does not sneer at her. Every human who employs her takes advantage of her status as a creature. They know they don’t have to pay her much and that she doesn’t have better offers, they know that she has no protections. She has been healing from her transformation, Neville’s death, and the loss of her home as well as she can. She is still bitter and missing her old life but she manages days without the choking grief. Anger has been instilled, slowly but surely. It seems her anger grows every day. Anger at the humans who spite her and take advantage of her, anger at the monster who turned her, anger at the war that still rages on.

The war just keeps raging on. She hears bits and pieces throughout her days, updates and hushed worries. It is getting worse, it's open skirmishes and duels now. Sides have been declared. She often wonders how Harry fares with these changes. She knows the stress must grow along with the expectations he bears. She hopes Ron and the others are keeping him sane and making sure he’s okay. She hopes they are all okay, that they’ll all survive the war. 

Coincidentally, it’s the day she reaches Krea that she hears of Dumbledore’s death.

She is sitting in one of her usual spots, a divot near stairs that offers her some measure of privacy, when the men walk by her. “Everything’s been going downhill since Dumbledore died. I’m telling you, the war is as good as over.” A nasally voice informs his walking partner. Dumbledore is dead. The Headmaster of Hogwarts. She can barely wrap her mind around the idea. She stands and starts her way down the alley, taking careful steps as it’s been a while since her last feed. Her speed and strength always seem to have their own mind the hungrier she is.

She knows the man is right in some respect. Dumbledore is a huge asset to lose, one of their strongest wizards. His influence with the Ministry and the world at large would be missed as well. They lost one of their heaviest hitters. Harry is their ace in the hole but Dumbledore is the one who dug the hole. Her fears for her friend’s safety grows with this knowledge. One of their greatest warriors, one of their greatest protectors, gone. She wonders who would look out for Harry now. Dumbledore and Sirius, two figures he looks up to and protected him are now gone. She hopes someone will step up and take care of him. 

She is struck by the thought of Dumbledore dying, not just what he represents. He has been around since she was a child. She doesn’t have the same relationship or emotional connection to him that Harry has but she is still attached. He was an important figure in her childhood, he was always present. A guiding force. She’ll admit she finds herself more attached to McGonagall, her guidance and caring leadership more essential to her. 

Despite the years under Dumbledore’s care, it’s overshadowed by that one night. She is thankful for his advice to remain in the wizarding world but more often than not she finds herself condemning him. He banished her from her home. She knows she is no longer a witch or human but all she can recall is his clear dismissal. She had seen his somber expression all those months ago but only now does she really understand it. She died to him that night. His expression was one of mourning. The death of one of his students. It’s a look she’s seen many times now. That she is now lesser than what she was, what they are. 

Her anger is quick to spark at the reminder, that even her own Headmaster was a bigoted human.

Her footsteps quicken with her anger, her careful pace more chaotic. She is all but storming down the alley towards one of the humans who employed her. She didn’t expect to turn the corner and run into someone. Even more peculiar, she didn’t knock them over. Instead she finds herself falling backwards. Her arms are caught before she can fall completely and she comes face to face with someone she hadn’t expected to ever see again.


End file.
